Publications

The WFP Food Security for the Ultra Poor (FSUP) project, funded by the European Union (EU), started in January 2009 with the goal to contribute to eliminating extreme poverty and hunger amongst ultra-poor families in disaster prone areas. Specifically it sought to achieve measurable and sustainable changes in food security and nutritional wellbeing of 30,000 participating ultra-poor women and their households through significant and sustainable improvements in their livelihoods.

The BRAC Development Institute (BDI) conducted three rounds of surveys of a sample of participating and non-participating households to determine the impact of the FSUP project. This report presents the findings on changes between the 2010 baseline, the 2011 and the 2012 outcome surveys across different socio-economic indicators of project participants and their households, including in food security and their ability to withstand shocks to their lives and livelihoods.

The results suggest that the livelihood support in the project has had significant positive impacts on the economic condition of the participatin women and their families. The enhanced earning capacity of these women has brought about remarkable improvements in the status of household food security measured against food consumption, frequency of meals taken by the households, and dietary diversity in terms of major food items. There also is clear evidence of improvements in other socio-economic indicators primarily due to the range of awareness activities in the project.

Finally, there is strong evidence that the FSUP project played a key role, in helping the women and their households move out of ultra-poverty: 63% of treatment households moved beyond the income poverty line of US$ 1.25 per person a day.